EQ2Alyza: I'm kind of confused, because I feel like you're lashing out at me, but I feel like I'm on your side.
So maybe let's break this down into separate topics.
Topic #1: Regarding the issue that some people have a philosophy of "my way of modding is the best, and everybody should use my way": I am also heavily against this philosophy. In fact, I feel like that's the whole point of 7th Heaven: It gives people the power to pick and choose whatever mods they want. (However, I also recognize that it can be a successful business strategy, such as Apple's proprietary product line.)
Topic #2: Regarding automation: I'm in favor of automation, and I'm in favor of anything that makes the end user's experience better. I'm in favor of making "supporting 7th Heaven" easier, and therefore I'm in favor of anything that makes your life easier.
So, we have two idealistic goals: (1) don't assume "my way is best", but instead, give users freedom to pick and choose what mods they want; and (2) automate things for lazy users and give them high quality experience.
Topic #3: The challenge with topics #1 and #2 is, it's very difficult to maximize both of these goals at the same time. It's more practical, from a development standpoint, to build something that prefers one over the other.
Reunion disregards Topic #1, and as it gets bigger and bigger, it's going to clash more and more against 7th Heaven, which is going to make things more difficult for you or anyone associated with 7th Heaven. Reunion believes
their vision of how FF7 should be modded is the best vision. On the surface, they say 7H "should" work with it, and they say "we can make IROs from the Reunion stuff", but given how radical their changes are, I somehow doubt non-Reunion mods will work with their stuff, and they've stated that if someone wants to add other mods, they actually expect people to mod against
their stuff, or else they're on their own. If they want to use 7th Heaven, they're on their own. Users won't be able to mix and match "Reunion mods" and "non-Reunion mods", unless they use two different mod managers: one to enable and disable Reunion mods, and 7th Heaven to enable and disable all other mods. Awesome, 7th Heaven is going to get even more complicated. You're going to
love supporting 7th Heaven when R06 comes out!
This brings me back to the 7H version of the GameConverter. (And the reason why I'm discussing Reunion on a thread about GameConverter.) Do you know what the 7H_GameConverter
really is? It's basically a R06 teaser. It automatically includes Reunion mods. It includes Beacause and Menu Overhaul. And it auto-configures your setup in preparation to use Anxious Heart. So I hope you can see why I felt like it was doing "too much".
Are you working heavily with the Reunion team, and are you still cool with all of the changes they are doing? Do you like Kaldarasha's suggestion to let R06 take over the GameConverter functionality? If so, 7H will officially be dependent on Reunion, right? And are you planning to modify the 7H tutorial to tell people to install R06 first before 7H? How will you support "people that don't want Reunion, but want 7H"? Are you planning to write two different tutorials, or just the one that tells people to install R06? Won't you then be abandoning all the people in Topic #1? This is the path you're headed towards if R06 replaces the GameConverter.
If you are actually still reading this, thanks, and sorry for the rant. Bleh. I think there might still be some disconnect or misunderstanding going on, and I'm generally pretty open-minded about this topic, so if you (or anyone else reading this) have a different perspective on this, I'm all ears. But again, I'm guessing most people are thinking "no biggie, eventually we'll just chop up R06 into separate IROs", but I doubt it's just gonna work that easily, it will probably require 7H to make major code changes.
7H requires a bit more setup, hence why it's written in the Install Tutorial that 7H_GameConverter_Final is required.
The link in the Install Tutorial is pointing to a file called FF7_GameConverter_7H.exe. Is that what you meant? That's the one I wrote my review for. And sorry if you felt like it belonged in another thread. (Which one would you have recommended?)